Obliterate, a scorched-earth game for the Casio Prizm, by Christopher "Kerm Martian" Mitchell of Cemetech. Play against up to six AIs in a battle for supremacy. Set your angle and power, then fire away, but watch out for the wind! This is the first public beta of my first game for the Casio Prizm, and includes full working AI, intelligent terrain generation, and all the features from Obliterate for the TI-83+ through TI-84+SE calculators except multi-calculator networking. As always, please give this a try, and post any comments, compliments, and criticisms in the attached topic. Screenshots and video below.

Download
[Prizm] Obliterate Beta 1

Woo, proof that all my work on the GCC based PrizmSDK wasn't wasted! \m/

Yes! Many thanks to you and Tari for the PrizmSDK and mkg3a, Qwerty and z80man and Simon for reverse engineering, and all the rest of you for moral support! Also, someone mentioned that Omnimaga had posted news about this; would someone mind letting them know to update the download link (and if they want, the video) if you see DJ_O or others of the gang?

Nice work! This is pretty fun to play, and I especially like the variation of the stages - they feel different every time, both gameplay-wise and visually (the background). I also like those dialog boxes that you made - they look clean and modern. However, as usual there are a few things I'm going to list that can become better...

- The ground is pure black. It works, but it would look better if it wasn't a solid color.
- When aiming and changing from 100 to 99 degrees, the last 0 remains, making it look like you're at 990.
- The edges of the thing that the tanks shoot and the arrow that shows where it is when it's above the screen are a bit jagged.
- Much of the game takes place above the screen, so it's hard to get an idea of how the shot is really traveling.
- The 3-bit issue. (I know that you already know about this )
- If the Quit option doesn't work, it shouldn't be there.

There are also a few issues with the .g3a that you might not really care about.

- 0x0010 and 0x0014 are using the old method of calculation. (Did Tari fix this in the newest version of mkg3a?)
- The name (0x0040) of the add-in is oblitr8.g3a, not Obliterate. This issue also exists with the localized names (except for Spanish?), and the internal name (0x0060) which is completely screwed up (appears as @OBLIR8.G3).
- The version number is 01.00.0000. (Does mkg3a support setting the version number?)
- The eActivity information is present. It shouldn't be there since this add-in doesn't support eActivities.
- You didn't use my icon background.

Very nice, Kerm This looks like it is progressing pretty smoothly. I'll have to try this on my Prizm at some point. Also, what is the song in the video?

Tanner: It's called The Druid, by Wicca, genre is Celtic.

JosJuice: Thanks for the thorough post! Let me address your concerns and thoughts in order:

- The ground is pure black. - I decided to go with a gradient sky and solid-black ground for some visual simplicity; I'll probably leave that for now.
- When aiming and changing from 100 to 99 degrees, the last 0 remains, making it look like you're at 990. - The same thing happens going from 10 to 9. I already have code that's supposed to resolve that, but clearly it doesn't.
- The edges of the thing that the tanks shoot and the arrow that shows where it is when it's above the screen are a bit jagged. - The projectile and the arrow are designed to be overwritten to the screen, not XOR'ed, so I need to resolve that with a routine that can save and restore a rectangle of screen so I can do overwriting.
- Much of the game takes place above the screen, so it's hard to get an idea of how the shot is really traveling. - I'd like to modify the AIs to pick a minimal-velocity trajectory to reduce that affect.
- The 3-bit issue. (I know that you already know about this Smile) - I'll try that magical bcall, (hehe, system call, silly me), but I think it won't resolve the borders
- If the Quit option doesn't work, it shouldn't be there. - Fair dues.

I'll have a shot at addressing these..

Fixed as of revision 10, but hasn't been part of any official release yet.

I'm guessing he didn't supply any name-setting options to mgk3a, so they all defaulted to the output filename. The name at 0040 never appears to the user AFAIK so that doesn't seem like an issue, and same with 0060 (which is derived from 0040 if not explicitly set and is then transformed to all-caps with a leading @).

No support (yet), but if there's demand I can pretty easily add it.

Needs fixing, in light of the changes to interpretation of the bytes at 0010 and 0014. Revision 13 (just committed) includes that fix.

I have played it but it won't let me quit, what do I do?

Edit: figured out why never mind.

Tari: remind me where I can grab a new .exe of that? Calcman: for other people who didn't figure it out, just press [MENU]. I'll remove the quit option.

I had an idea today. Why not make the player's tank a different color? It would make it easier to see which one is you, especially when the AIs are shooting.

Hey, why not? Sounds like a good idea to me! So:

1) Fix aim angle number erasing
2) Different color tank for player/AIs
3) Compress titlescreen (RLE?)
4) Try the 3-bit color fix
5) Make projectile and arrow properly AND'ed
6) Make AIs aim down from 180 or up from 0, not up from 90 and 0.
7) Remove Quit option

Change the GUI arrows in-game.
Currently, the power arrows change the angle and vice versa.
i.e You press 'up' to change the power but the arrows next to it say left and right.

That's absolutely correct, I can't believe I (and everyone else) didn't notice that. Do you think the graphic should be changed or the keys should be changed. Right now the graphic matches the z80 version but the actual keys are the opposite.

Awww man! This looks amazing Kerm, I really have to get a prizm now... so many good games for it are coming out for it. I probably will get one during the summer

Thanks Qazz! I hope that you do indeed get a Prizm.

I implemented all of the following (only thing missing is titlescreen compression). Do you guys think it's about ready to go, or would one or two people be interested in testing a .g3a before I release it?

1) Fix aim angle number erasing
2) Different color tank for player/AIs
3) Fix the arrows in the aim GUI
4) Try the 3-bit color fix
5) Make projectile and arrow properly AND'ed
6) Make AIs aim down from 180 or up from 0, not up from 90 and 0.
7) Remove Quit option

I wouldn't release it as a final until you compress the title screen. Trust me, I'm hard at work hopefully by monday.

I could do the 84KB lookup table + 8-bit indexed image thing myself; I'm just being too lazy.

You mean 4K palette and 80K image data? Yeah, that's quite doable by yourself, I guess, but I myself am finding it to be a pain to do anything like that -- however, I now have the functionality to scan for @number_of_colors almost working, so later today I can scan your image (.bmp or .dib format, pl0x) and tell you how many colors yours has. Just upload it for me in original format (I can format to .bmp myself if your want) and I'll give some stats.

No, the palette would be 512 bytes. 256 colors * 2 bytes per color = 512 bytes. A full-screen image is 82.9KB if it's 8 bits per pixel.

There are a few small issues with the new version that some of us beta tested...

- The arrow that shows if a shot is above the screen seems to have a few red pixels next to it that shouldn't be there.
- Restoring the 16-bit color doesn't seem to work the first time the main menu is accessed, only the times after that.
- Would it be possible to make MENU return to the Obliterate menu even when a shot is traveling through the air?
- White border looks a bit worse than black, but it doesn't really matter and there's not much we can do about it.

Other than that, great job!

EDIT: Oh, and the arrow that shows which tank is aiming also looks a bit odd (in a similar way to what the top-of-screen arrow was like before).